Has The Wrong Image Been Portrayed?

                                          

                                           Ajee Smith

The  Native American culture has been perceived to be represented stereo-typically throughout film and television for years. It is this preconceived notion that the way Native Americans are visually set out to be through media has been created by American Society. By sating this I mean the way Americans view the Native American male and the Native American female is what is being shown on television; but what is left out is their real identity and the way they really portray themselves. This leads to the stereotype because as mentioned in Mainstream Media “Hollywood tends to ignore the historical perspective of Indian cultures and rarely offers a well-grounded understanding of Indian identity and discrimination in film towards Native Americans continues to go on and on today.” Come to find out this issue of how Native Americans are being perceived through film occurs in all patterns, and a huge stereotype created of the Native American image predominantly the female image of a Native American Woman is presented in a cartoon child hood film that most people may view as harmless to such a message, and this film is known as the Walt Disney production Pocahontas.

Disney produced the animation Pocahontas in 1995 and this film served the purpose of demonstrating the unexplored savagery of the English as they prepared to attack the Powhatan people mentioned in Mainstream Media. Although a childhood cartoon film there was a message being provided in which Pocahontas being the main character of the film is an image of a Native American woman and for those who do not know much of the history of Native American women there was a mysterious visual that the audience was given. In the film her role is that of a heroine, peacemaker, wise and adventurous woman but she has a great body shape, smooth long black hair, brown skin, she is extremely beautiful. Going back to the way Native Americans are perceived in American Society their woman are viewed as very beautiful and mysterious which is exactly how Pocahontas was drawn out and portrayed in the film.

In the very beginning of the film Pocahontas was very wise and seeks to help her father during the time of war but once she meets a European explorer named John Smith who is a part of explorers trying to invade her village, this image of her goes away. Pocahontas turns into a beautiful character symbolizing a Native American Woman who falls in love with a white man who at a certain point defends the love of her life by putting her own life and danger and being willing to conform. Her character shows how Native Americans were viewed as a savage culture that was to be conformed to a European style. Even the lyrics to the songs Savages which plays during a scene which Pocahontas wonders was extremely offensive because of the lack of cultural sensitivity. Pocahontas portrays a stereotype on women’s role in society and gives an inaccurate account of real life events as mentioned in Disney. The story of Pocahontas is already controversial because it is unclear. The real story of Pocahontas is known as a girl being around ten or eleven years of age when English settlers arrived in Jamestown. Already, Disney has created their own idea of who Pocahontas was and created this image of a beautiful Native American Woman falling in love with a white English Man.

There are a lot of positive and negatives about this film but it predominantly highlights so many aspects of the Native American people being misunderstood and misjudged even by their physical appearance. As I may have mentioned before Pocahontas image highlights Americans standards of norms of beauty also mentioned in Disney. The representation of Pocahontas justifies the economic and social marginalization of Native Americans because it reveals exactly how American society views their culture, their woman, and what happened while English settlers invaded their land. Although Pocahontas is a loved Disney film and shows an optimistic view towards nature, and love, and color, it still misrepresents the Native American people in the worst way. Pocahontas image falls into the Indian princess stereotype rotted in the legend of Pocahontas and is expressed through a demure and deeply committed woman to a white man as found in Disney. The movie endorses the idea of a good/bad Indian and underscores the notion of Native American Savages and puts a twist to the history and killings and oppression of Native Americans because in reality they were pushed off of their lands and forced to conform to the way settlers believed they should live. There’s so much to the history of Native Americans that is hidden in the Disney Production of Pocahontas.